


The Peculiar Wight

by joonfired



Category: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Backstory, Brothers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Smut, F/M, Francis deserves a hug, Francis is a cinnamon roll and I will protect him, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I love a good redemption story, Kate is fierce, Monsters, Peculiar Characters, Sibling Rivalry, So many emotions, Time Travel, Unintentional Redemption, Wights, but the good kind with feelings, don't worry he'll get one, no graphic bang-time here y'all, the monster has a heart, these boys, wight backstory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-14 13:58:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14137440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joonfired/pseuds/joonfired
Summary: Not all monsters are evil.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is basically my brain just running with an idea I had about the backstory of the wights, and because I absolutely love complicated monster stories.

Francis had not meant to become evil. All he’d done was mistakenly follow his brother and his fateful quest for immortality. Not because he himself had desired life eternal, but because William was all he had. They were brothers, and so where one went, there also was the other.

It was all Francis had known . . .

Until the accident. Until he was twisted into a hollow, hungry existence that still lingered in his dreams. Until he lost his humanity, never to be found again.

“Cheer up,” Will told him, nudging Francis out of his dark contemplations. “You’ve made it, brother. You’ve finally evolved.”

“Yes,” he replied. “Finally.”

He was not a slavering form bound by unquenchable hunger, but Francis was still a monster. He felt it deep in his bones, the memory of endless starvation lurking in the pit of his stomach.

“Sorry it too you so long though,” Will continued, mindless to his brother’s inner wrestling. “But they’ve all gone into loops now, so we’re left picking at scraps instead of feasting like kings. Damn shame. Still”—he clapped a pleased hand on Francis’ narrow shoulder—“at least we’re back to normal, right?”

What his brother did not know was that, as much as he could, Francis had fought against his gastly nature. He had pulled back from a killing blow, allowing a few scattered children to escape throughout the years. He’d tucked himself away from the world, hiding in undiscovered shadows, ready to wither away and end his monstrous existence . . . until Will had found him and fed him, so eager to have his brother back.

To normal, Will said. The word sat heavy and sick in Francis’ mouth, souring his thoughts. Normal was what they had left behind when they traveled to Siberia, William eager to change his fate and Francis unable to let him go alone. What they were now, after the starving shadows, was _different_. Not normal.

They were still monsters, just in different skins.

“Cheer up,” Will said again, jostling Francis’ shoulder a little before dropping his hand away. “No more hiding in the darkness, no messy hunts, no disgusting tongues getting in the way.” He sighed happily, features stretched wide in grin. “Ah, everything’s good now.”

“Yes,” Francis murmured, saying what he knew he should. “It is.”

Will nodded, his expression bright and his tall frame full of barely-repressed glee. And while he could not bring himself to share in his brother’s happiness, Francis also couldn’t bring himself to take it away. He never had. So, he said what he needed to, nodded along with Will’s chattering, and was altogether miserable while doing so.

He should have been happy. He should have been exultant at finally shifting from hollowgast into wight, no longer ruled by the hunger for blood. And he was . . . just not in the way his brother and the other wights were. For while it was easier to pretend himself normal, he could not forget what he was. Not like the other wights did. Not like his brother did.

~~~

Days bled into weeks, which then inexorably stretched into years. Immortality was theirs, but the cost ate at Francis. He woke up in cold sweats every night after blood-soaked dreams of his gastly time, back when he looked as monstrous as he felt.

One night, Will discovered his nightmares, coming into Francis room. His brother’s hair was all askew, his pupil-less eyes eerie in the shadows. He sat on the edge of Francis’ rumpled bed, peering at his damp features.

“You still remember being a hollowgast, don’t you?”

Francis swallowed the knot of terror in his throat, mouth slack as he tried not to gasp too loudly for air. His lungs still felt tight and swollen in his chest, and he could taste the blood he’d been drinking in his dream. And, since words weren’t in his grasp right now, he simply nodded in answer to his brother’s question.

Will frowned, thumping him in a gentle manner on the back, like that simple gesture was the solution to all of Francis’ problems. He’d never been the comforting sort of the two of them, but at least he was trying. That made Francis wonder if maybe his brother wasn’t so monstrous as he seemed to be; if maybe Will felt as trapped by everything as he did.

“You should tell Golan about it,” Will said. “He’s good like that, and he’s one of the few of us who remember that time, too.”

But Francis shook his head. He knew Golan, knew that the wight had a silver tongue and an easy way about him . . . but it was those precise traits that put him off to Francis. And of every wight that he knew, none seemed as stricken by their existence like he felt.

“They’re fading,” he lied. His voice was rough, like he’d been screaming for hours.

“Mm.” Will made a neutral sound in the back of his throat as he reached up to scratch the side of his head. “Well, that’s good, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Francis agreed, summoning a smile . . . though it felt more like a grimace. Hopefully the dark would be forgiving and warp it into what he wanted it to be, which was a reassurance to his brother that everything was fine.

~~~

Another year passed.

The wights kept experimenting with breaking into the loops while the hollowgast prowled in the shadows, spreading terror through their hunger. They were the creatures that kept monster stories alive. For even if peculiar blood was not available, they still ate, even though without the changing force they could not evolve from their grotesque form.

Francis followed Will as his brother drifted across the world, still bent on his quest to find perfect immortality. He did not offer to harm peculiars, but he did not prevent their harm, either. There weren’t many to worry about anyway; almost all the known peculiars had been swept up by their _ymbryne_ guardians into the loops. And the ones who were either unknown or chose the risk of mortal life, well, it was rare that they lived very long outside of a loop.

“The _ymbrynes_ are the key,” Will told him one day as they sat in the far car of a train, traveling in 1899 from Edenborough to London. Somewhere further up the car, a baby wailed petulantly. “They’ve got power over time, so logically they’d be the ones connected to changing time.”

“That’s why they’re the ones who make the loops,” Francis commented, too weary of Will’s theorizing to devote much effort towards sarcasm.

“Yes, I know that,” his brother snapped distractedly. “But still, they _have_ to have some connection to—”

Francis tuned him out then, turning his head to the view outside the window. In the early days of winter, this part of the world liked to be differing shades of gray. There was the green-tinged gray of the withered fields, broken up here and there by the weathered gray of cobblestone walls, all spanned by the cloud-blanket gray slate of the sky.

In the blurry reflection of the window, Francis glanced at himself. He was wearing darkened glasses to hide the revealing emptiness of his pale wight eyes and a brown newsboy cap slouched low over his forehead as further concealment. His features were narrow and worn, and he wondered if one could glimpse the monster he was in the hollows of his cheeks or the thin slant of his mouth. If he smiled, perhaps so, for his teeth were not straight or perfectly blunt.

He opened his mouth, poking at the slight points of his incisors and the even sharper angles of his canines. Yes, his eyes were not the only tell-tale sign of his being, although they were the easiest and most recognized.

“What are you doing?” Will’s voice had shifted from thoughtful droning into that of poignant curiosity.

Francis yanked his finger out of his mouth almost guiltily, instinctively glancing around at the scattered occupants of the train car to see if anyone else had noticed his behavior.

“We’re supposed to fit in with humanity,” Will said admonishingly. His moment of shrugging on the mantle of the oldest sibling struck at Francis because, for that moment, he could imagine them as being truly normal—the elder brother admonishing the younger. “Acting like that is not.”

“No one saw,” Francis muttered, though he tucked his hands away.

“Good,” Will proclaimed. “Honestly, Francis. Sometimes I wonder if you even care.”

“Care?”

“Yes, dammit,” Will sighed. “About everything: the mission, the reason we’re still here, the mistake we have to fix.”

Francis’ voice fell even flatter as he said, “Mistake?”

“Oh, did you plan on becoming a mindless beast for several centuries?” Will raised an eyebrow, delivering the sarcasm Francis had considered several minutes ago.

“I didn’t plan anything,” Francis retorted, his temper slowly rising.

They hadn’t talked about what had happened to shift them into hollowgasts. Will probably hadn’t thought it was a mistake that they had even gone so far in their experiments to cause such a thing, and Francis hadn’t brought it up. They had merely proceeded forward . . . as soon as they’d regained a mind that was capable of such thought and action.

“And you think I did?” Will shot back, whispering in his anger. “Christ, Francis! None of us wanted all of this to happen. But it did, all right? And now we’ve got to fix it.”

Francis could have followed his pattern of leaving matters alone, letting Will calm down, and then moving on with their lives. But the enclosed space of the long train ride coupled with his long-suffering frustration at what his brother’s decisions had led to won over silence.

“There wouldn’t be anything to fix if you had just been happy with the life you had instead of ruining it with your cursed experiment,” he muttered, glaring out the window at the flitting gray.

Will was silent for an uncomfortably long time. It made Francis’ instincts twitch with the odd sense of the predator become the prey, though that wasn’t a true comparison, was it? Since he and Will had both been predators, unchallenged by any. They were equal, were they not?

“You didn’t have to come,” his brother finally said, so low that Francis barely heard him over the clatter of the train. “You could have stayed in the life you clearly preferred, and then you wouldn’t be caught in my mistake.”

Will’s tone was . . . regretful? Mournful? Defensive?

Francis stayed quiet, unable to find a response. Maybe he and Will weren’t so different. Maybe his brother hid his regrets under a show of levity. Maybe he too wished that they hadn’t gone to Siberia and had instead lived a truly normal life, one that would have ended a long time ago.

~~~

In London, they were met by Golan.

The older wight was sporting a fashionable top hat in a sleek maroon color. He wore small round sunglasses over his eyes, resting his hands upon a narrow wooden cane as the two brothers approached him.

“Hello there,” Golan said, his voice bland of any accent, which meant that he sounded vaguely American.

Will nodded a greeting.

Francis mumbled, “’Lo.”

“Where’s the smiles, boys?” Golan asked, twirling his cane and beaming a smile of his own upon them. “I’ve got good news.”

As they left the station and clambered into a waiting cab that wound through the bustling London streets, he revealed his news. They’d discovered a way to access the loops with hollowgasts, which meant that any discovered loop was now weak against attack. A plan had been formed by the elder wights, those of them who’d evolved first and thus realized that there was hope for redemption after their drastic, monstrous devolution.

While Will drank in this hope with undisguised eagerness, Francis felt himself spiraling even deeper into despair.

Hope? Redemption? Were they even worthy of such things? After all, they’d brought this fate upon themselves, tampering with things that weren’t meant to be changed. Loops were one thing, safe havens for peculiars, but rewriting the threads of fate and altering time for selfish purposes? They’d deserved exactly what had happened to them, and the horrors dealt by their hollowgast selves only cemented that fact.

So, the true issue was that all but Francis believed themselves worthy of a second chance. That murdering their own kind was an unfortunate setback in the progress towards their goal of immortality. And what were they chasing eternal life for? Nothing but their own gain.

Will was right. He should have let him go alone.

“What, no smile from you?” Golan asked, his silvery voice prodding Francis out of his thoughts.

Francis glared at him.

“You know him,” Will said with a cutting laugh. “Too busy mourning over his lost humanity to try for a better future.”

“We were never human in the first place,” Golan reminded them. “Peculiar will always stay peculiar, no matter the form. Humans wouldn’t have survived what we have.”

He then laughed, the sound jostled by the bumpy movement of the cab wheels over the cobbled roads. Will joined him, and Francis kept to his silence, furious over what they considered joking material.

“Right, here we are,” Golan said some short time later when the cab came to a stop next to narrow, tilted building in a cramped street full of narrow, tilted buildings. “There’s a loop entrance in the basement and Mallory’s waiting for you. Best not keep him waiting, since you know how it is when you’re hungry, right?”

He opened the door with a knowing wink, next motioning for the brothers to exit the cab.

After they stood on the street, it was obvious that Golan had not intended to accompany them. He closed the door of the cab, leaning to call out as the driver urged the horse forward back into the depths of the city, “Make sure Mallory doesn’t eat too much! We still need him for another loop before—”

He was out of earshot then, the rest of his sentence lost in the growing fog of the coming night. Francis and Will shared a bewildered look before Will’s expression settled into one of readiness.

Francis knew he was, using the obtuse expression, out of the loop. Perhaps he shouldn’t have ignored Will’s train ramblings before their tiff had left them finishing the rest of their journey in near silence. Because, while his brother seemed confident in whatever plan they were supposed to follow, Francis was confused.

“I’ll explain everything inside the loop,” Will told him, noting his lost expression.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The brothers enter a loop, accompanied by the hollowgast named Mallory.

They entered the building, the corners soaked in shadows. The floorboards creaked ominously under the brothers’ feet as they made their way to the basement, feeling their way by touch down the cramped, damp stairway leading into utter darkness.

_Hungry._

That was Mallory then, his cold voice slithering into their minds. Francis shivered as memories attacked him of when he was the pleading creature waiting in the dark. It had been a simple existence for him then, burdened only with hunger that was rarely broken by moments of horrific clarity.

“Yes, yes,” Will said in answer to the hollowgast’s statement. “Don’t worry, Mallory; you’ll eat soon.”

 _Soon_.

“But he’s not supposed to evolve yet?” Francis asked, shuffling after the sound of Will as his brother moved about the low-ceilinged space.

“No, we need him. We’re good, but we’re not as effective as we once were.”

Ah, of course. Why would they give up such an army? Invisible hunters were better soldiers than they who stood on the inescapable edge between humanity and peculiarity.

**_Hungry_ ** **.**

“Hold on,” Francis murmured, turning his head in the direction where he sensed the hollowgast’s presence.

He could not hate the creature for its hunger, but he could loathe the choice made by the man it had once been. The choice that put them here in this moment, trapped in a fate they did not want.

“Here we are,” Will said, his declaration followed by the sound of his fingers scraping at the wall. “Found the entrance.”

“How can Mallory come with us?” Francis asked.

Light bloomed in front of them as Will began to tear apart the wall, brick by brick. Francis smelled winter and salt air as the loop reached out for them, brushing into their reality.

“Like I said,” Will replied, glancing over his shoulder. “I’ll explain everything in the loop, all right?”

**_H u n g r y._ **

The hollowgast moved into sight, sliding out of the shadows. Its three tongues darted out of its gaping mouth to dance around the edge of the loop entrance as it edged closer.

Will stepped in front of it, arms outstretched. The hollowgast oozed back, tongues withdrawing with a disgruntled wet sound.

 _Hungry_.

It was begging now and upset at being kept from yet another attempt to satisfy the raging hunger that ruled its actions. But it did not fight against Will’s authority, sinking onto its narrow haunches in a waiting crouch.

“We’re going to get you back, Mallory,” Will told the hollowgast, reaching out to touch its smooth black head.

Francis felt a twinge of jealousy at the care in his brother’s voice towards the creature, but quickly brushed the feeling aside as ridiculous. William may be utterly misguided in his desire for immortality, but he truly regretted what had happened to those involved in their experiment. There was no disguising that, and it was what kept Francis from hating his brother.

“You have to hide, Mallory,” Will continued, hand still resting on the creature’s head. His voice had shifted from caring into firm tones, holding the hollowgast’s mind with his own, something all wights were able to do having once been gastly themselves. “You will only eat what I allow you to.”

_Hide._

“Good.” Will straightened, tucking his hands into his coat pockets as he looked up at Francis. “I think we’re ready.”

They pushed through the gap in the wall then, the dark presence of the hollowgast slithering after them. Will went first, Francis’ hand clutching his coat sleeve so as not to accidentally end up in a different time.

The loop was located on a blustery moor, a cold wind slicing right through Francis’ too-thin coat. He shivered and hunched his shoulders up against the chill, glancing at Will for direction. The hollowgast lurked in his brother’s shadow, tongues darting out in various directions, testing the air and acquainting itself with the loop.

So, Golan was right—hollowgasts were now able to enter loops.

~~~

They left Mallory on the moor, restless with hunger. The loop was centered around a nearby town, the folk of it eyeing the brothers as they walked in. Francis glanced around as they went, wondering which wary gaze belonged to peculiars. Perhaps the ones who looked away first? Or was it those who stared back, as if ready to defend themselves against attack?

Since it was a heavily overcast sky they walked under, the brother’s sunglasses were an odd feature. Francis wished he could remove the obstructing things, see the loop with bare eyes, but that would be calling even more attention to he and Will. They had put themselves under enough scrutiny just by showing up, surely causing a new event in the repeating cycle of the loop.

“When are you planning to enlighten me?” he asked Will. They’d been walking for about five minutes in the town.

“Soon, brother,” Will assured him. “Soon.”

~~~

Soon was two hours later, after they had secured a room in the local inn. The local bar was also located downstairs, and the music and laughter and shouts from there trickled up through the warped floorboards. Francis sat on the edge of the large bed while Will stood by the window, looking out over the darkened town.

“The peculiars probably know we’re here by now,” Francis said, hoping to prod his brother into the promised explanation of why they were in this loop.

“Mm,” was all Will responded with, quite noncommittally.

Francis sighed and leaned back, wrapping his coat around him. The chill of this place was pervasive.

“Where are we?” he tried again a few minutes later.

“Somewhere in Wales, late eighteenth century.”

Francis sat up in surprise. He’d wondered at the dated clothing of the townsfolk, but since the brothers had dressed in rather bland outfits themselves, he hadn’t thought much of it.

“This is a very old loop then,” he said, realization dawning across his mind. “From before the incident.”

Will glanced away from the window with a small, crooked smile.

“Yes,” he said. “It is. Which means that, unless they’ve somehow managed to get news of the future in here, no peculiar knows what we are.”

“Or the danger they’re in because of Mallory,” Francis added darkly.

“Don’t be like that, Francis,” Will chided, disappointment flickering across his pale features. “You know what must be done to regain ourselves . . . unless you’d like to curse Mallory and the rest of the hollowgasts into staying the way they are forever.”

“No . . .” Francis lay back down, pinching his brow in frustration. “You know I don’t mean that.”

Or did he? He believed their monstrous existence was fully deserved. Of course, he longed to escape such a curse, but he also knew it was impossible . . . and that even if it were possible, he was not worthy. None of them were.

“We’re not like them,” Will said, gesturing at the town that lay outside the window. A particularly loud burst of raucous laughter followed his statement, as if in punctuating agreement. “And we never will be. So, why would we choose to hide and consider ourselves so different that none can view us, doomed to live the same day over and over? And they call _us_ mad!”

He scoffed at the notion as he turned away from the window. Francis slid over to allow room on the bed, right before Will sat down with a heavy sigh.

“What’s really mad is trapping yourself in such a life,” his brother continued. “I didn’t want that—never did. We shouldn’t have to hide our differences from the world. Like there’s something _wrong_ about us.” Will’s voice slipped from soft commentary into bitterness. “We shouldn’t have to fear discovery. Instead, the world should perhaps fear us! They did once, you know. That’s where all their stupid myths and fantasies have come from.”

“I know,” Francis said quietly, closing his eyes against his brother’s anger.

These grievances were nothing new for Will. They were the reason he had gone to Siberia, chasing after the hope that he wouldn’t have to hide his peculiar natures, Francis trailing blindly after him.

No . . . not blind. He’d known what Will wanted, but he had only realized the depths his brother was prepared to go to when it was already too late and their grasp on normality slipped away into starving darkness.

Will flopped down next to Francis, releasing another heavy sigh. Their shoulders brushed, and Francis had the sudden urge to curl against his brother like they were children again. He didn’t remember much from their life before the incident, but he did remember that it had been just he and Will against the world for many years.

“If we change ourselves back,” Will said, his voice quiet, “would you do it?”

“I would certainly like to,” Francis said slowly. “But . . .”

He did not know how to finish his thought. Not voiced aloud. Everything he felt—the guilt, the regret, the horror of what he had done, what he did not do, the fact that he was still alive after everything that had happened—were half-finished thoughts in his head. He felt them rather than explored them, and since he seemed the only one to feel such things, he had not truly voiced them.

He’d simply gone from one day into another, the only path he knew how to walk.

“Oh, I know,” Will drawled sharply. “You’d rather hide than take the leap for greatness. I know. But you were still there. You were there when we tried the first time, so don’t tell me you weren’t interested in the power we could have had.”

“You know why I was there, Will,” Francis snapped, squeezing his eyes shut. He didn’t want to see the expression on his brother’s face; he’d heard enough in his tone. “If I’d known what you were after, I would have—”

“You bloody liar!” Will sat up, the mattress bowing under the unexpected movement. “Don’t pull the innocent card, Francis—don’t you dare. You knew, you _knew_ why we were there, and still you stayed. You’re far from the long-suffering saint you enjoy acting as.”

Francis couldn’t argue against the appeal of immortality. Yes, he had wondered about it and understood the intrigue it held. But after everything he had been through, what he had been, he didn’t want immortality. He didn’t want to stay the same through the centuries; he wanted to live. He wanted to change and grow old and, yes, eventually die.

“Yes, I knew,” he snapped, facing Will’s anger eye to eye. “And I should have left. But I didn’t, because if I left, then I would have left _you_.”

“Why is the thought of immortality so distasteful to you?”

Francis laughed in disbelief. Will really didn’t know, did he? No, of course not. He was blinded by power, rationalizing the horrors they’d committed as minor setbacks in the grand scheme.

“We became monsters through no fault except our own,” he said, leaving the bed to pace in short, frantic strides across the room. “We upset the order of the world. We murdered our own kind. And since immortality comes at such a price, I want nothing, absolutely _nothing_ to do with it.”

“God, you still don’t understand, do you?” Will shook his head.

“I don’t see—”

But Francis’ words were drowned out by a rising chorus of screams below them, accompanied by the gasping, grating cry of a hollowgast on the hunt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is super fun for me to write, and I hope anyone who stumbles across is it enjoying it. If you've read/seen MPHFPC (I highly suggest reading it as the books are much, much better) than you'll notice that I've played with the hollowgast/wight history a little--especially with how memories work--though only for the point of expansion.


End file.
